


Red Light

by cafeanna



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternative Universe - No Nen, ChroLeoPika, ChroLeoPika Week, Crime Reporter Kurapika, Drug Dealer Kuroro, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Propositions, med student Leorio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29580669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafeanna/pseuds/cafeanna
Summary: However, these past few weeks, Kurapika has been bitten down to the quick, slouching over his makeshift workspace at their cramped kitchen table. His old laptop whirling and coffee strains overlapping misprinted pages, a sea of underlines and question marks dashing down in his messy scrawl.Like a bloodhound, Kurapika had caught onto a story.And he never gave up a chase.Or, Kurapika never asks for anything.
Relationships: Kurapika/Kuroro Lucifer | Chrollo Lucifer/Leorio Paladiknight
Comments: 14
Kudos: 11
Collections: CLK Week '21





	Red Light

**Author's Note:**

> [ChroLeoPika Week: Feb 18th: Film Noir/Detective]

“Thanks for doing this.”

The words fall from Kurapika’s mouth as he’s adjusting the buttons on his shirt. Gold skin against the slip of sweat. Three down, an impressive show of collarbones and the top of the sternum. Kurapika is all prominent bones, a bony elbow in his gut sharp in contrast to his ribs pressed below his own.

Leorio swallows down the feeling. “Yeah, no problem.”

He knows how big this is. Kurapika never asks for anything beyond passing the sugar or taking out the trash. However, these past few weeks, Kurapika has been bitten down to the quick, slouching over his makeshift workspace at their cramped kitchen table. His old laptop whirling and coffee strains overlapping misprinted pages, a sea of underlines and question marks dashing down in his messy scrawl. 

Like a bloodhound, Kurapika had caught onto a story.

And he never gave up a chase.

These were normal things.

But, lately, the shaking hands and the nervous, stiff-jointed way he curls into Leorio’s twin bed feels more unsettling than surprise. Kurapika comes to him in the littlest hours, sleep-sapped and needy in a way that makes Leorio feel more like a security blanket than an object of desire.

And he doesn’t quite know what to do with that.

Kurapika is a great writer. Dense, painstakingly researched and hard to get through sometimes. Kurapika’s exposés were like wading through the deluge. Raw and metallic as if he filled his inkwell with dark blood.

And whatever he had between his jaws now must be blood-warm and beating.

“So, this is the place?”

Kurapika flips up the mirror, cutting the meager light. “Yup.”

The house they pulled up to seems to sink into the ring of overgrown yard. Ghoulish in the headlights, thick paint peeling off the panels. The windows were glowing like heat lights, hot red in the suffocating swelter of summer. It’s the kind of place that had a smell, dilapidated, soft molding wood and wet rot, made worse but the sticky air, the barmy thick perfume in summer.

It’s the kind of house Leorio, as a child, would dare, then double dog dare, someone to touch. It’s the kind of house someone might sneak in to search for ghosts. It’s the kind of house—

Leorio shivers in his car’s weak air conditioning. “God, Kurapika what have you gotten yourself into?”

He doesn’t really register the words coming from his mouth. Filling up the spaces between them.

He doesn’t regret them, however.

“Leorio.” Soft, under his breath. Twisting his stomach up with the enabling, but if Kurapika wants to burn a hole in his nose its really none of his business.

His hands loosen on the steering wheel.

It’s not particularly about the story—and it’s always in pursuit of a story, isn’t it?—but Leorio fails to remember a conversation between takeout or morning coffee, stretched between the hours they would lie on the couch together or into each other’s beds; there is nothing _forcing_ Kurapika to pursue this. No one behind him to guide the fall but himself. And he knows that. He’s always known that, and yet—

Kurapika’s profile is lit in soft red, corroding the line of his mouth, dipping into the socket of his eye, down his nose.

He wears insomnia like a bruise, tender on his cheek, begging for care.

And Leorio’s heart just _softens,_ but—

There is a tapping on the window, thick metal rings against glass.

Leorio stares out at the pale face beyond the window on the passenger side. Dark brows quirked, Kurapika rolls down the window, knees shifting away from him to press against the door. “Hey, I’ll be there in a minute.”

His voice shifts when he speaks, some less tired, less worn version of himself that Leorio might have been able to meet for drinks, ask after him and the length of his legs. Gooseflesh prickling his knee under a warm hand.

“Who’s your friend?”

The man is leaning into his car now, elbows on the edge, shoulders and head filling up the space where Leorio might have been able to see beyond. He is soaking in that red light, moth-eaten sweater pulled loose along the helm of his sleeve. His dark eyes are on Leorio. Flat obsidian.

“Roommate.” Leorio is surprised to hear the word fall from his mouth, unbidden, iced. His hand reaches across the passenger seat to grasp the man’s own. “Leorio.” He offers with a firm shake.

“Kuroro.” He answers, cool amusement tipping his brows, plucking at the corner of his mouth.

Leorio thins his lips.

“Nice to meet you.”

Teeth peak in the curl of that mouth, not a sneer, but a smile. “Likewise.”

His hands are cold, veiny, and surprisingly smooth. His grip hangs on Leorio’s palm a moment after they let go, cold rings, equally chilly fingers sliding against the inside of his wrist.

The hand comes to perch on Kurapika’s bare thigh, an action that shocks him if the stiffening of Kurapika’s spine is anything to go by. The man’s fingers drum along his leg and travel the length of bone, the swell of muscle.

Leorio can imagine the sensation.

There is unstable beat of silence, lapsed between one moment and the next, Kurapika pulls at the doorhandle, breaking the moment as it comes to stretch. The man moves back to avoid getting hit by the door as it Kurapika slides out and shuts it behind him.

His face drops to the still open window, expression smooth but for the pull at the corner of his mouth in a chagrin manner. “I won’t be long.” He says, voice airy already.

Laughter trails after him.

“’Won’t be long’.”

A hand slides around Kurapika’s waist, pulling him in. Leorio can’t see their faces from this angle, but through the window he can make out the shift of bodies. The ease of the movement, Kurapika allowing himself to be guided in. The wet sound of a kiss reaches his ears as the guy’s hand falls to Kurapika’s ass.

Leorio feels something sinking in his chest, a narrow, knife-point pit that slides deeper between the tangle of arteries and straining muscle.

It traps his tongue behind his teeth, stinging with the salt on his lips. He watches the two of them crunch up the walkway, Kurapika tucked into his informant’s side, the hand slipped into his back pocket as if it belonged there.

The screen door yawns open, cracking enamel before snapping back against the frame.

A cicada song buzzes out in the dust. Eerie above the muffle of bass from behind those paint-chipped walls. His hands fall into his lap, sweaty palms dragging against cargo shorts, the sweat chilled curve of a knee. 

He brought his textbooks along, thinking he might be able to get in some light reading while Kurapika did—

His mind wanders back to that pale face, profile lit in red like Kurapika’s, shadows hinting across his mouth, the corner of an eye. He looked like something from a horror film. Too much, not enough, not entirely _there_ in the inky blow of pupils and nervous tapping fingers.

It’s textbook.

All the shit Leorio has seen before, his patients coming in numb-jawed and carved out, laughter humming loose-lipped and red tinged, bloody noses, puffy tongues.

The macabre, zombie-like state he found Kurapika in when the story sank deeper.

Because he needed to _understand_ things, experience them for himself. Make his stories hit harder, sweep better, put the readers in the moment and make them understand—

All the excuses Leorio answered with a grip on his wrist, voice reaching louder than it ever did, louder than he normally allowed.

And the silence that permeated days after was deafening. His eardrums were still popping from Kurapika’s tentative request, excusing his lack of license, and—

Movement on the porch catches his attention. The awning sunken in the heat, a dead string of Christmas lights and cobwebs, and Kurapika standing in the outline of the screen door. The red almost violent around him now. Leorio watches him, watches as his shoulders fall and he steps down the stairs, jumping over the last step. Gravel crunching under his tennis shoes.

Leorio reaches to unlock the door, but he never locked it. Kurapika hangs beside the car like his informant did, hesitant, then his head and shoulders slip through the open window. His expression horribly pensive.

“Well, that was quick.” Leorio says, trying for a joke, but it doesn’t fall right from his tongue. Doesn’t hit. Almost without thinking, he is mental-mapping Kurapika’s body, looking for any rumple or disarray, anything to suggest—

His fingers curl into fists. “What’s the matter?”

Kurapika’s frown deepens.

Leorio feels the low bob of guilt slide up his throat.

He shouldn’t have brought him here. He shouldn’t have allowed this. He shouldn’t have—

“It’s fine Leorio.” Kurapika says, and Leorio might have actually eased into it, if he had not heard it so often. The tight, anxiety-riddled feeling of too much choked up inside has him feeling like a bottle about to explode.

But Kurapika looks—

Not pensive. Not anymore. Not all pressed emotions and brow-knit anger, not exhaustion hung like those Christmas lights, or pulling the corner of his mouth. Not even scared, an expression of gut-punched horror that haunts the edges of Leorio’s nightmares.

Kurapika looks—

Embarrassed.

The confusion of it settles him some as Kurapika opens the door from the inside and slips into the seat. Movements too graceful, too calm. He doesn’t shut the door behind him, as if he’s just grabbing something he forgot, but when he makes no effort to start rummage through his bag or Leorio’s glove compartment, the questions start bubbling again.

“What’s going on?”

Kurapika perches on the edge of the seat, knees pressed up against the gearshift. Freckled, sun-warm. His eyes skimming the curve of the steering wheel. “He wants you to come up.”

This—

It—

Leorio can taste something sour in his mouth, in the back of his teeth, peaked from fright. “For what?”

“He, uh,” Kurapika cranes his neck, uncomfortable, and glances back at the door. Leorio glances too, almost shocked to find no one there. But his presence is felt. Watched. It makes him shiver. “He wants you to come up.”

The question still stands, but.

There’s that unabashed embarrassment again. Leorio knows it well. Knows it from the times they’ve fallen into bed together. That soft blush coloring questions. Flushing violent when asked outright.

“Why?”

Kurapika does him the small courtesy of not breaking his stare on the spot. His lips pull thin, his teeth click. _No, fuckin’—_

“Kuroro, he, um.” Kurapika hums along the words but, thankfully, gets to the point and pulls Leorio out of doubt before his mind can truly swan dive off the deep-end. “He wants you too?”

He says it like a question. As if he’s testing the words out.

Repeating back what was said of him.

What he was bade.

Temper curls under his tongue. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

“What?”

“’He wants you too’?” Leorio repeats, eyes searching his. “What the fuck does that mean, Kurapika?”

He is pressing his lips together again.

“It’s exactly as it is.”

“As what is?”

“As I just said—” Leorio turns away from him, but the clip of his seatbelt yanks him back in place. He fumbles with it, more needing something to do with his hands than needing to get free, but his fingers are clumsy, shaking. “Leorio—” Kurapika sounds closer now, but Leorio can’t look at him. “Hey.”

A hand touches his shoulder and he flinches back, hard.

Startled brown eyes meet his own. In the anxiety-tapped adrenaline, Kurapika almost looks soothing. The yellow light of the backseat bathing him in gold, washing away all that red. His mouth soft. “Come here.”

He doesn’t remember moving.

Kurapika’s hands are on his jaw, thumbs brushing, face tipping, his mouth pressing against his, lips parted, tongue slipping against the cut of his teeth. Just as he always did, just as he learned in those first few fumbles together. Kurapika flushing sweet and Leorio guiding him down.

He is surprised by the hunger that takes in the kiss, tongue sliding against his own, and a breathy little sound that carries more weight on him than it should.

Kurapika strokes along the side of his throat, kisses pulling him deeper and when Leorio tries to pull back, Kurapika has a hand in his hair.

He thinks for a moment—he _knows_ —that this is all a ploy. That they will never return to their two-bedroom quite the same again. That this is _ruining_ something, but.

“Please.” Kurapika’s lips brush his own, his voice strung up, over-warm, and needy, and it’s all Leorio can do to open his eyes and look at him. Salt stung lashes, red complexion.

Slowly, so very slowly he grabs Kurapika’s wrists, mindful of the one still bruised from his grasp, and pulls him off.

The horrible tremble and fall of Kurapika’s expression terrifies him. Neck-and-neck with the twisted mask that haunts his dreams. “Leorio.” His name on his lips is a pleading thing. Leorio almost wishes he used one of his hands to cover his mouth.

“Leorio,” he whispers, leaning into his space again, winding. Leorio pushes him back and is almost surprised when Kurapika stays. Not reaching for him, but his eyes lock with his. His mouth tipping into babble. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

Leorio can feel himself shaking, shivering, steel forming the bend of his spine and pulling him upright, tight, strong and stronger—

And Kurapika—

Kurapika never asks him for anything.

Of course, never aloud. Never verbal. He never asks Leorio to wake him up or calm him down. Never asks for Leorio to make him dinner or fold his laundry. Leorio did that all himself. Did it because he wanted to. Did because he knows it usually appeals—

Kurapika never asks him for anything.

But he’s asking for this and Leorio can taste bile on the back of this tongue.

“I don’t fuckin’ believe this,” Leorio hisses, unbuckling his seatbelt.

Kurapika comes back to him slowly. His noise of question a wet bubble in his throat, but Leorio’s hand curls at the doorhandle, legs unfolding.

It occurs to him, between the slam of the door and the hood of the car that he can say no. Should say no. He’s well within his rights. He can grab Kurapika, get in the car, and put this night behind them. It occurred to him when Kurapika’s tongue brushes his teeth, but instead, he stares up at the house. Red lights, music vibrating the weak bones.

There is a sense of foreboding in the weed-choked yard, littered with children’s toys and beer cans, a bottle-glass trap sunk along the dried-up flowerbeds.

Although Leorio saw no one in those hellish windows, no curious glances or peeling curtains, he feels watched.

Eyes were the windows to the soul, and windows were the eyes of the house.

No room for second-guessing.

A hand curls around his own. He glances down at Kurapika’s too-tight grip and then his face. A flicker of a smile on his mouth, sad and sorry.

“He’s in the basement.” He says, as if that’s what Leorio’s wondering.

“Oh.” _Oh, that’s **lovely.**_ “Okay.”

The smile pulls again at the corner of Kurapika’s lip, twitching with effort then comes to rest. Leorio’s keys are in his hand. He must have forgotten to take them out of the ignition.

They wouldn’t be leaving for a while.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, I let that run and it got dark.
> 
> I had this vague idea on twt (@cafeannafics, hi, I’m annoying) like a month ago that ChroLeo would meet this way, but I found a way to wedge Kurapika in.
> 
> I grew up in the rural Midwest so there’s not a part of my childhood that isn’t at least bit pinched with Midwestern gothic (and creepy old houses). I’m imagining a nice barmy summer this year. Something burning. 
> 
> -cafeanna


End file.
